The Corona Project: America's First Spy Satellites [Hardcover]

Curtis Peebles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

In the early 1960s, when the United States and the Soviet Union faced each other in a nuclear standoff, a small band of engineers, designers, and intelligence officers secretly set out to do the impossible. Armed with little more than a few ideas and drawings of the payload, they created America's first reconnaissance satellite program - the Corona project - which for decades remained one of the nation's most closely guarded secrets. This is the story of their extraordinary efforts, from the first desperate requests for intelligence on the USSR, throuqh a series of heartbreaking failures, to Corona's ultimate success. This book focuses not only on the Corona project's great technical achievements but also on the remarkable human side of the story - on the engineers who built the satellites but could not divulge what they did even to their own families, and on the recovery pilots who competed to see who would be the first ace. Their stories appear for the first time in this book along with previously classified details of their recovery unit and a list of the ace pilots.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 351 pages
• Publisher: Naval Inst Pr (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557506884
• ISBN-13: 978-1557506887
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,754,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good overview of Corona with much new information, April 1, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Corona Project: America's First Spy Satellites (Hardcover)

This book brings together quite a bit of new information about early satellite imaging in general and Corona in particular. It covers many interesting political, technical, military and personal aspects of the subject. The author combines information already in the public domain with new information from sources who have spoken with him now that the program has officially come out of the "black world". It is heartily recommended for anyone interested in the development of military space technology but is also a fine source for those who are mainly interested in Cold War politics. Hats off to anyone reading this who was involved in Corona. You folks did a lot to make sure the good guys won!

4.0 out of 5 stars a good book, August 28, 2006

By 

lector avidus (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Corona Project: America's First Spy Satellites (Hardcover)

Curtis Peebles, an aerospace historian affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, has written a book that serves as a good introduction to the early years of American satellite reconnaissance. Without going into too many details, the book does a good job of describing the different aspects of the program, and its ramifications. The book will probably appeal more to those who were involved in the Corona Project, or looking into it for a particular reason than to those looking for casual reading.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars REVIEW 3 of 3: Peebles: The Corona Project, January 21, 2000

By 

Eugene N. Miya (Moffett Field, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Corona Project: America's First Spy Satellites (Hardcover)

Of the 3 books on this subject which I have so far read, this was the second book I obtained and read. The most accurate picture can be gained by having all three books (sorry, but more $ to Amazon, and you may tire of seeing certain images again).

Peebles' Corona book has more chapters on the human side of the recovery (mid-air capture, ++) and process (3 stages of interpretation, ++). Reading this latter part brings more meaning to McDonald's Appendices (mentioned below). [Most human story. The whole story is important cold war history.]

Day's book (Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellites (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight)) has a chapter on the Soviet Zenit program and launch vehicles lacking in the other books (++ and a few details not covered by either Peebles or McDonald.

The most technical, expensive, longest-delivery time, and most professional is McDonald's ASPRS book. A chapter details the Corona earth model (++, math). The appendices include redacted original reports (++) and some marginally reproduced space images (++). The book also has a pointer to the breast cancer X-ray ID which the NRO/CIA claim to have released. These will not be found in Peebles. [Most space images.]